

I've seen this sentence

許すまじくは許さない。俺自身は主義としたそうした一線を持たないが、だからといってそれを持つ人間を軽んじることはしないだろう。

and I would like to know what is the meaning of まじくは so that I can understand
the expression 許すまじくは許さない.

Making an attempt to get some hint through machine translation, I've got the
following.

"Forgive me, but I won't forgive you. I myself don't have that kind of
principled line, but that doesn't mean I don't look down on people who do."

Although I know there may be some flaws in this translation, is 許すまじくは許さない
referring about a moral principal, about a way of being? I must say I'm
somewhat lost when it comes to fully understanding the whole idea of the
original sentence and translating it.


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question
grammar
Meaning of まじくは


It would seem that this usage is entirely analagous to 詳しくは, 遅くまで, 近くに,
(朝)早くから and so on, where the 連用形 of an adjective is used as a noun, 許すまじくは
thus meaning 'what isn't to be/shouldn't be forgiven'.

In classical Japanese the 連用形 of both verbs and adjectives can be followed by
は, which has the force of ば, forming a conditional, which would also seem to
be a possible interpretation here, 'if it shouldn't be forgiven, then...', but
you wouldn't expect to see this in modern Japanese (I thnk).


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answer


The first sentence does seem like a moral principle, so the subject of 許す is
not "I" but generic "one".

> 許すまじくは許さない。俺自身は主義とした **そうした** 一線を持たないが、だからといって **それ** を持つ人間を軽んじることはしないだろう。
>
> One shall not forgive the unforgivable — I myself do not have **such** a
> "(red) line" as a principle, but this does not mean I disdain those who have
> **one**. (i.e., I personally do not hold the belief of "an eye for an eye",
> but I wouldn't stop those who believe in it.)

まじ ("ought not") is an auxiliary that is mostly archaic but is occasionally
used like this in modern Japanese. See: [How to parse
政治家にあるまじき発言?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/61665/5010)

As aguijonazo pointed out, grammatically speaking, this sentence should have
been: 許すまじ **き** は許さない, where 許すまじき is a noun phrase that means "the
unforgivable" or "what you must not forgive". まじき is an attributive form (連体形)
of まじ, and an [attributive form served as a
noun](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/64669/5010) in archaic Japanese. In
this case, it's likely that the author attempted to use an old expression
based on classical Japanese and made a simple grammatical error. After all,
even native Japanese speakers don't usually remember how to conjugate まじ!


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answer